Various devices are known for assisting a patient in complying with his/her medical regimen. The most sophisticated devices are so-called medication dispensers, which dispense medication packages at prescribed times to provide the patient with the proper dosage of medications. The medications are prepackaged by licensed pharmacies into packages according to the medical regimen of the patient. The medication packages have labels that contain information about the patient, the content of the package, and the time of the dosage.
Typically, the medication packages are arranged as a strip, which is inserted into a container of the medication dispenser either by the patient or a caregiver of the patient. The medication dispenser delivers the medication packages to the patient one package at a time according to the information provided by the labels of the packages. The medication dispenser typically allows the dispensation of medications to be monitored and controlled so that the patient, the caregiver or any other person having access to the apparatus can be assured that the patient is taking the medications as prescribed.
A problem associated with medication dispensers of the prior art relates to their dependence on a package type and format of the printed data. The known medication dispensers can only handle medication packages having a specific package type with fixed format of printed data. If a wrong package type is applied in a medication dispenser, information from a medication package cannot be obtained or is only partly obtained.